Actor Tom Skerritt died this past Wednesday, October 21st, at 93. MASH, Alien, Top Gun, Picket Fences — a heck of a resume. But the role that got him adopted by the fly-fishing world was Reverend John Maclean in Redford’s 1992 A River Runs Through It. Field and Stream reported that he fell for the Montana water while shooting it, came back 30 years later for the documentary Reflections of the River on the Gallatin, served on the board of American Rivers, and lent his name to Montana’s 2023 Wildlands Festival, which raised $513,473 for American Rivers and the Gallatin River Task Force. His verdict: “Nothing could have prepared me for the grandeur of those waters.”
Now the parts the movie fudges. The film insists the holy water is the Blackfoot near Missoula. It was shot in 1991 around Livingston and Bozeman — Livingston played Missoula, 200 miles from the real thing — and the river you’re actually watching is mostly the Gallatin, in the canyon south of Bozeman, plus the upper Yellowstone and the Boulder.
Brad Pitt didn’t do the casting. Jason Borger, son of fly-fishing legend Gary Borger, cast nearly all of it, including the famous shadow cast off the rock. Pitt trained for weeks on a rooftop in Los Angeles, no river required.
And the fish were mostly lies too: several “trout” were half-gallon milk jugs full of rocks, and in the boulder scene the fish was a guy from Dan Bailey’s Fly Shop pulling the line. It still won the Oscar for cinematography. It also grew the fly-fishing industry roughly 60% in 1992, then another 60% in 1993 — one movie, and suddenly everyone and their dad owned a vest.
Which is the point of Skerritt’s line: the grandeur wasn’t the river they claimed. It was the one they found, and spent 30 years trying to protect.
Feature image via Field and Stream
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